A Freudian slip
by PaleMagnolia
Summary: [Shock Wave] After deflecting the acoustic waves away from Honolulu, everyone had flown back to D.C. - well, everyone but deputy director Rudi Gunn. He'd been left behind on the Glomar Explorer to clean up the mess they've made... and to wonder if Sandecker's aide, Molly Faraday, might possibly be flirting with him. Probably not. Of course not. I mean, pff. What a crazy idea.
1. Soft lights

"A shame," she decided after a thoughtful survey of the thirty men and four women who struggled so long and hard to tear apart and move the antenna, their dedication and tireless efforts now seemingly wasted in a magnificent attempt to save so many lives, "that all this may very well come to nothing."

"Don't give up on Jim Sandecker," said Gunn. "He may have been blocked by the White House in securing the Roosevelt, but I'll bet you a dinner with soft lights and music that he'll come up with a replacement."

"You're on," she said, smiling thinly. "That's a bed I'll gladly lose."

He looked up curiously. "I beg your pardon?"

"A Freudian slip." She laughed tiredly. "I meant 'bet'."

_Clive Cussler, Shock Wave [1996]_

* * *

Rudi Gunn knew he was pushing his luck, as the match he was using to lit up the candles sizzled and flared brightly in the dim light of the _Glomar Explorer _dining room. Staring at the flame, he thought about lighting himself yet another cigarette, but reconsidered the idea and tossed the burnt match into an ashtray. He smoked way too much, anyway.

But, God, how he needed a smoke right now.

Dressed in a blue Oxford shirt and khaki trousers (about the only clean clothes he had left in his suitcase), Gunn looked his very best – which wasn't saying much, he thought with a self-deprecating half-smile.

With his horn-rimmed glasses, narrow shoulders and sharp Roman nose, he knew he was no charmer. His piercing blue eyes, the one feature that could maybe save him from complete anonymity, were hidden behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He looked like an accountant, a schoolteacher, some dull, colorless bureaucrat who slaved away unnoticed in a cubicle behind the water cooler.

He knew that. Hell, he knew that well enough.

And yet, for some unknown reason he failed to understand, Molly Faraday, ravishing, ten-year-younger-than-him Molly Faraday, seemed to like him. Or, well, at least, he _thought _she might like him. He was probably mistaken, though. Surely mistaken. Absolutely, there's-no-doubt-about-that, mistaken.

When he had bet a romantic dinner that Admiral Sandecker would come up with a ship to deploy the reflector to the convergence zone, so they could reflect the soundwaves back towards Gladiator Island, she had looked at him – _him_, plain old Rudi, a short, scrawny, bespectacled nerd of a man in his late forties - and she had given him a flirty answer.

… _Or maybe (probably, surely), she hadn't,_ he thought. _I__t's all in your head, man_. When he had made the proposal of taking her to dinner, he hadn't been looking exactly dapper: shirtless, sweating from the humidity of the steamy Hawaiian night, dirty and tired and dehydrated, he knew he must have looked like a goddamn wreck of a human being. And yet Molly Faraday, all class and grace and cool composure in her khaki blouse and shorts, had looked at him and said, well, I'll take that bet.

Gunn smiled bitterly. _I'm making a fool of myself_, he though, shaking his head. Nervously, he removed his glasses and polished the lenses with a small cloth. _She wasn't flirting with you, you goddamn moron. She only said that to cheer you up. _

Gunn knew he should have insisted Molly went back to Washington with the Admiral and the other members of the NUMA crew. Instead, she had been adamant about staying back with him to arrange the return of the _Glomar Explorer _to its rightful owners. He couldn't help but wonder if, maybe, just _maybe,_ she had done it on purpose...

_I'm about to lose my face in the most catastrophic way, _he though. But there was no going back: he looked up at the sound of approaching steps and put his glasses back on.

Molly Faraday walked into the room and an amazed expression crept slowly on her face. She was wearing a sleeveless V-neck black dress that exposed her arms, collarbones and lovely long legs; her toffee-colored hair was pinned back in a soft low bun. Classy. That woman was so classy... And attractive. Damn, was she attractive, Gunn thought, as he looked at her slender, graceful figure coming nearer.

_She walks in beauty, like the night_, he thought, absent-mindedly. What was it again? A poem? A song? He couldn't remember right now. Odd; he had always been good at remembering things.

She walked forward and waved a hand at the table. "I have to say, Commander, you've surprised me. How did you come up with such a fancy arrangement?" she asked in her soft, soft voice, smiling.

Gunn shrugged, feigning modesty. "A bet is a bet, and I'm a man of my word" he said; his voice was calm, controlled, mildly ironic, but his heart was beating fast and shallow. He tried not to stare at the way her mouth – _lovely, lovely lipsticked mouth – _was twitched into a smile. He had known Molly Faraday for years, since the day the Admiral had hired her to be his intelligence agency coordinator; but they never had any occasion to exchange more than a few polite words before. Their respective fields of action simply didn't overlap.

"Once we'll be back in Washington, there's gonna be a hell of a lot of work to do to clean up the mess we've made up here." he added. "I don't know when we'll ever be able to have a proper dinner. So" he shrugged again, smiling. "I decided to get it over with here." He made a vague gesture towards the table.

She laughed, a soft, sweet chortle. "But you got the deal wrong, Commander Gunn. Admiral Sandecker pulled the Glomar Explorer out of his hat and you _won_ the bet. The dinner was my prize in case you _lost_ it."

"Well, yes. You're right". He raised his eyebrows and shuffled on his feet. "Then I guess I should blow the candles out and call it a night."

"Don't even try that!" she laughed, putting a hand in front of the candles as if to protect them. "I'm just in the mood for a candlelit dinner. Now, if you were a gentleman, Commander, you'd pull the chair out for me."

"At your service, Ms. Faraday." Swiftly, Gunn stepped forward and pulled the chair so she could sit at the carefully arranged table. He had somehow managed to get his hands on a white tablecloth that was clean enough and not too wrinkled. Glasses and plates had been easy to find - Howard Hughes had been an eccentric, and the _Glomar_ _Explorer _was an eccentric ship to match him, equipped with fine china, delicate – if a bit worn - silverware, and wine glasses; the candles, though, had been harder to get. After maybe an hour of useless search in the kitchens, he had finally found a couple of emergency candles in the engine room: they were awfully dirty and smelled like engine oil, but after quite a bit of scrubbing and rubbing, they had gone back to their original yellowish white. They were now burning proudly on the table, stuck into the neck of two old wine bottles. Their dim, orange light now danced on Molly's face in the most endearing way.

He studied her dress with surprised admiration. "Do you always pack a cocktail frock in your suitcase when you go on a mission at sea, Ms. Faraday?"

She chuckled and smoothed an imaginary crease on her leg. "Well, Commander, I'm a Washington girl. You never know when a fancy occasion might arise."

He smiled. "That's hardly the fancy occasion. It's just a single table laid for two" he waved a hand around "set into the deserted dining room of a decrepit drillship platform, sailing in the middle of the sea."

She laughed softly. "Well, it's fancy enough for me."

He smiled again. "If you say so."

She smiled back. "So, now that everyone's gone back, it's just the two of us, Commander." Her voice was low and lovely. Everything about her was lovely: lovely face, lovely voice, lovely frail vertebrae at the base of her neck. Gunn had to avert his eyes from the tempting curve of her throat.

"The two of us, and half a dozen mechanics working downstairs" he joked, to break the tension that was starting to build inside of him. It had seemed like a good idea in the afternoon, to invite her to dinner, and set up the table and prepare the food and all that. It was supposed to be some kind of joke, something to have a good laugh at when they were back in Washington. _Hey, remember that time we bet a dinner and I prepared it in the middle of the ocean? _That sort of thing.

But now that Molly Faraday was there in front of him, in a low-cut dress and looking absolutely stunning, he was quite at a loss about what to say, what to do. As cold and collected as he could be while at the helm of a ship, as legendary his analytical skills could be while working at his desk in Washington, he was painfully, desperately shy with women. All of his degrees in chemistry and finance were about as useless as electric windows on a submarine when he needed to have a conversation with a girl.

Molly Faraday seemed to sense his unease; she nodded towards a bottle of wine and smiled. "Should we open that?"

"Of course." Glad to have something to do, Gunn grabbed the bottle and fumbled with the corkscrew. It gave him an excuse not to look at her for a moment.

"What is it? Chardonnay?" she inquired, curiously.

Without looking up, Gunn chuckled. "You wish. It's some weird Hawaiian wine nobody ever heard about; it's the only thing I could find in a pinch. If it tastes like gasoline, you have my explicit permission to spit it in my face."

She laughed. "All right, pour me the stuff. I'm feeling adventurous, tonight."

"Are you?" Gunn smiled, pouring the wine into her glass with a firmer hand than he expected, given how nervous he was. He filled his own glass and looked at her. "Should we – I don't know - have a toast?"

"Absolutely" she agreed, and raised her glass. There was a soft gleam in her eyes. "To us saving the world?" she said, not without a touch of irony.

"Is that what we did?" he asked, with a snort and a little laugh.

"If it isn't, I say it was damn well close enough, Commander."

He twitched his lips in a smile. "_To saving the world_, then" he said, and raised his own glass.

"To _us _saving the world." she corrected him.

Their glasses clinked quietly as they touched. Molly took a sip of wine and swished it in her mouth. "You know, it's not that bad." She wrinkled her nose and nodded. "Not bad at all. Good choice, Commander Gunn."

"Blind luck." Gunn gave her a lopsided smile. "As I told you, I grabbed the first bottle I could find."

She turned her glass over in her hands and stared at him. "You must be kind of used to this whole 'saving the world' business, by now" she joked.

Gunn frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean" she took another sip from her glass and looked at him over the rim. "Your field trip in the Arctic, to save those hostages from the terrorists. That bloody job in the Mediterranean... The way you handled the Sahara crisis."

He took a long swallow from his own glass and winced. "Dirk is the man you're thinking about." He waved a hand dismissively. "That was all him, and our pal Al Giordino."

But she was looking at him intently. "No, it was _you_. If I remember correctly, you almost won a Nobel for your research in Mali."

He gave her a thin smile. "_Almost_ being the key word, there. Being a candidate is not exactly the same as winning, is it?" He put his glass back on the table and shrugged. "Compared to Pitt and Giordino, I'm a shabby second best - if that." he added, with a short laugh.

"I think you're being way too hard on yourself, Commander." Molly tilted her head to the side and stared straight in his blue eyes with the trace of a smile on her lips. "You're as good as second bests come, if you ask me." She looked relaxed and at ease, quick with a laugh or a clever reply. She was also, Gunn thought, absolutely, maddeningly enchanting.

"If that's what you think." he shook his head and laughed.

She raised an eyebrow. "It is" she declared.

He stared at her for a moment (_was she teasing him?_) then smiled and rose from his chair, eager to change the subject. "Well, what _I _think" he said "is that it's high time I bring some dinner on that table."


	2. Music

The appearance of food on the table lightened the mood considerably. They talked pleasantly about work, mutual acquaintances and common interests while they ate the dinner Gunn had prepared beforehand: crab salad and boiled crawfish, noodles, nothing too elaborate: he wasn't a fancy cook. But Molly looked positively impressed by his culinary efforts.

"I must say, I'm quite surprised" she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. "Unrepentant bachelors like you are not usually great cooks: I have to admit, I was pretty sure we were going to eat instant ramen and toast."

Gunn put on a mock outraged face. "I might be an old bachelor, but I'm not an uncivilized savage" he said, then he smiled. "Although I must admit that's what my dinners consists of at least three times a week."

She chuckled. "We'll see what can be done about that."

Gunn looked at her curiously. Was she flirting with him? Teasing him? Just mocking him? _God, I'll never be able to understand women, _he thought.

Molly tilted her head to the side and looked at him; a slow, malicious smile crept on her face.

Gunn frowned and smiled quizzically. "What's so funny?"

"You know, Commander, I'm not sure you actually _did _keep your end of the bargain." she said, leaning back on her chair.

Gunn put down his fork and looked at her across the table. "I beg your pardon?"

"You forgot about the music." She tapped her fingers on the table. "You said there would be soft lights _and_ music."

"Oh" he chuckled. "Right. Hadn't thought about that."

"Good thing we Washington girls are always ready for fancy occasions. Wait there." She leaned forward, quickly touched his hand with hers, rose from the table and started for the door, her movements fluid and elastic and, to Gunn – who had drank about half the bottle of Hawaiian wine by now - quite hypnotic. He was not much used to drinking. He was not much used to beautiful women having dinner with him, either. He leaned back on his chair and let out a deep breath. He took off his glasses and put them back on, played absent-mindedly with his fork, then nervously took off his glasses again. _Pull yourself together, Rudi, _he chastised himself.

Molly was back in a couple of minutes, holding something in her hand.

"There." She put a small device on the table. It looked like a small recorder.

Gunn leaned forward. "What's this?" he asked, knowing full well what it was. He had an identical one in a pocket of his briefcase.

"What does it look like? It's a portable cassette tape player."

"Another Washington girl luggage staple?"

She laughed. "It helps pass the time during long flights. I'm surprised you don't have one, Commander, considering how often you take trips around the globe."

He shrugged. "I usually _read_ during long flights."

She smiled and rolled her eyes. "Such a swot" she snorted lightly.

"That, I am." He laughed. "And my understanding is that you are, too - _miss former NSA analyst_."

"All right, fine, maybe we're both nerds." She laughed again. "Now, let me see how that works without headphones." Molly unplugged the earphones, rewinded the tape, pushed a button and, after a few seconds, a song started playing. The sound of it was quite staticky and scratchy, as if the tape had been worn from having been listened to over and over again.

_The very thought of you, and I forget to do_

_The little ordinary things _that everyone ought to do

"That's Nat King Cole. Didn't know you were a jazz lover" Gunn looked up, surprised. He listened intently for another moment, frowning. "Isn't that his '58 album version?"

She raised an eyebrow. "It is."

"That's one of my favorites" he said, earnestly. "I think I have the vinyl record in my collection, back at home."

Molly smiled and adjusted the volume. "Good. I knew we'd like the same things." With a mischievous smile, she put the player back down on the table, stood up in front of him and reached her soft, naked, lovely arm towards him in invitation.

Gunn stared blankly at her for a moment, uncomprehending. "Oh, _no_" he said, his eyes going wide beneath the lenses, as soon as he realized what she meant. "No, no, no. Not a chance. _No_." He shook his head vehemently. "No way on Earth. I don't dance."

She laughed, a soft, silvery little laugh. "Come _on_!"

"I'm not even _remotely_ drunk enough to dance."

"Then drink some more."

He kept shaking his head, laughing. "Not gonna happen, Ms. Faraday."

"Oh, come on. One dance. Just one. I promise I won't tell the Admiral."

"Oh, for God's sake" Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the song, maybe it was the fact that the air seemed to blur all around her face, but before he knew what he was doing, Gunn had taken Molly Faraday's hand and had let her lead him a few steps away from the table. He uncomfortably raised his arms so she could step into them, and tentatively put his left hand at the small of her back.

They both laughed softly as they adjusted their position. "I'm not sure I remember how it's done" he said, his voice hoarse with embarrassment and fear and subtle excitement. His heart was thumping hard against his ribcage again, like some kind of trapped bird, and there was something else, too - a hollow sensation in his stomach, a certain tightness in his throat.

_Get a grip, old man_, he reproached himself. _You're not fifteen years old_. But it was hard to keep calm now that they were so close, and Molly's hair smelled warm and sweet next to his face.

Gunn had learnt how to dance at the Naval Academy, where the motto was that an officer must first and foremost be a gentleman. He remembered his dancing lesson at Annapolis with a sense of never-dimmed horror, but he was determined to always be the first of his class, come hell or high water. And he had learnt. He had learnt all right. The box step, the heel turn, the waltz sequence, the whole shebang. One-two-three, step-sway-step. Did he remember anything of it? It had been twenty… no, he thought with an inward bitter smile, more like _thirty_ years ago.

Yes, he had danced, once or twice, in more recent times; Admiral Sandecker had dragged him to a few hellish fund-raising parties in the Capital. But the only people he had danced with (stiffly and ill-at-ease, in a crowd of old politicians and greasy bureucrats) were old, mothballs-smelling matrons with nasty crinkled faces...

Now, half-drunk and alone with lovely, sweet Molly Faraday in a dimly lit deserted dining room, it was a _completely _different thing.

_To hell with everything_, he thought. He dropped his eyes and let the rhythm pull him. After a few moments, their bodies synced, and the next thing he knew, he was actually dancing with her, and much more smoothly than he had hoped. _Slow-quick, quick-slow, side step, turn._ He had no idea how he was managing to pull this through, but, damn, he was. _Thank God for muscle memory_, he thought.

"Not _bad_, Commander" Molly whispered in his ear. He could hear the smile in her voice. "Not bad at all."

"You wait until I step on all your toes" he said, as he pulled her hips close to his. It was going so well, he thought, surprised at his own ease and confidence. _The wine must have gone to my head_, he thought._ Step, sway, step._ A little bit too well, he thought. Maybe he could risk a little; he pushed her away, holding on to her left hand with his right, then he reeled her back in, and made her lean sideways in a dip. She threw her head back, showing the elegant white curve of her neck, and laughed. Gunn regretted his move immediately. _Oh, God_, _I'm a bloody idiot, _he thought. _She's laughing at me._

But she wasn't. "So you _can_ dance, after all!" she said, pleased, surprised, still laughing softly. "You unapologetic liar, you!"

He laughed too, relieved that, apparently, he had managed not to make a complete fool of himself. They kept gliding across the floor. "I said that I _don't_ dance, not that I _can't_ dance, Ms. Faraday. There's quite a difference."

"Where did you learn to do that?" her cheek was warm and soft against his.

"Courtesy of the U.S. Navy" he smiled.

"You can command a vessel, you can cook, you can dance" she gently teased. "Is there anything you _can't_ do?"

_Ha-ha. _He thought_. Having a social life, sleeping at night, standing up to the Admiral. Talking with a woman without looking like a complete goddamn moron_.

"Would you like me to give you the list in alphabetical or chronological order?" he said, laughing softly.

"Careful, Commander. That sounds like a humble brag" she said, gently teasing him. _Sidestep, turn_.

"God forbid." He smiled and felt the sudden, absurd impulse of nuzzling his lips into her hair; he almost did - almost - but the song abruptly came to an end. They stopped dancing for a moment, and he felt his muscles tensing.

"Well…" he started pulling away from her. But after a few seconds of rustling grey noise, another song started. Gunn recognized Doris Day's _Dream A Little Dream Of Me_. Molly moved closer and let her head rest on his shoulder.

"Is that your 1950s hits compilation?" he asked, trying to keep a light tone in spite of the wild beating of his blood in his ears.

"Are you complaining, Commander?" He couldn't see her face, but from the sound of her voice he knew she was smiling.

"Not at all." Could he dare pulling her a little closer? He did. She was humming the words softly against his cheek. _Birds singing in the sycamore trees, dream a little dream of me. _

_Oh, what you do to me, _he thought, his heart beating in his throat. Each step seemed to pull them a little bit closer together.

She turned her head and pressed her lips to his ear. _Say nighty-night and kiss me_, she sang softly, and her voice was low and hoarse and oh, so sweet. J_ust hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me._

Was that an invitation? Was she encouraging him? Was she asking him to...?

_Hell, yes, she was_, he decided, or maybe the wine decided it for him. He tilted his head to the side and found her mouth with his. His heart skipped a beat and, for a split second, he was sure she would push him away and ask him what in hell did he think he was doing. But she didn't: she kissed him back, slowly, deliberately. Her mouth was soft and warm and tasted like the wine she had been drinking; rich, fruity, sweet. So sweet, he thought, confusedly. _Sweet, sweet, sweet._ Everything was suddenly so sweet.

"It was about bloody time, Commander Gunn" she said softly when she broke away, her smiling lips still brushing his. "I really didn't know what else to do to get you to kiss me."

"I'm afraid I'm not exactly the brightest when it comes to getting hints, Ms. Faraday" he whispered, his voice low and raspy.

"Yes, I noticed that." She laughed softly. "I got to tell you - for a Nobel prize candidate, you can be pretty damn dense, Commander."

"Yeah, I guess I am." He smiled in her hair. "Isn't it also about time we drop the rank?" he said, after a while, tilting his head to look at her. "If you need to keep insulting me – and, to be fair, I would understand completely if you did - at least do me a favor and call me Rudi."

She chortled and brushed her lips against his chin. "So be it, Rudi." she smiled. "And it's '_Molly' _for you, now."

He nodded. "Molly it is, then."

Another song (Dave Brubeck's _Take Five_) started playing in the background, but neither of them was listening anymore. Molly leaned her head back to look at him, took his glasses off his face and put them on the table; he leaned in to kiss her again. "The Admiral is going to strangle me with his bare hands for that" he whispered, smiling. "You know how he feels about his employees dating."

"Well, _Rudi" _she smiled_,_ "what he doesn't know can't hurt him, right?" She started unbuttoning the collar of his shirt and raised an eyebrow. "And _I _won't tell him if _you_ don't."


End file.
